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RECOLLECTIONS 



OF 



FIFTY YEARS SINCE 



A LECTURE 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



Young Men's Association of the City of Utica, 



FEBRUARY 2, 1S43. 



BY EZEKIEL BACON. 



Htico, fl\ 12. 

R. W. ROBERTS, PRINTER, 58 GENESEE STREET. 
1S43. 



m-- 



RECOLLECTIONS 



OF 



FIFTY YEARS SINCE ; 

WITH GLANCES AT THE PRESENT ASPECTS, AND FUTURE PORTENTS 
OF THE AGE AND THE TIMES. 



A LECTURE 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

Young Men's Association of the City of Utica, 

FEBRUARY 3, 1843. 



"One generation passeth away, and a'notuef g^aeratioi? cora';t'i: but llic 
earth abideth forever.'' 



BY EZEKIEL BACON. 



fttUa, N. 8. 

R. W. ROBERTS, PRINTER, 58 GENESEE STREET. 

1843. 






3'it 



WHY PRINTED ? 



Having received no advice, and been troubled with no 
requests from any quarter touching the publication of the fol- 
lowing performance, the author has not been placed in the 
perplexing dilemma in which "honest John Bunyan" tells 
his readers that he found himself, when, as he quaintly but 
sententiously says — 

Some say — " print it John," 
Others say — "no;" 
Some say — "it may do good," 
Others say — "not so." 

But availing himself of the hint of Milton in his "Are- 
opagitica, or speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing," 
that " a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet 
than a fool will do of Sacred Scripture ;" and trusting that 
the former class will be found much to outnumber the latter 
in the small circle of his readers, the writer has taken the 
unsolicited liberty " upon his own hook " of committing this 
"idle pamphlet" to the ordeal of the press — in coming to 
which determination he was also aided and prompted by some 
special considerations. 



4 

The curiosity incident both to youth and age, which holds 
many an engaged and patient listener to the rehearsal of a 
tale of " olden time " (a dull and " thrice told tale," though 
it may be) has undoubtedly incited to many of the requests 
which have been made of the author for its perusal, as well by 
those who heard, as also by those who had not an opportunity 
to hear it, as it was delivered. The inconveniences attending 
that mode of coming to a knowledge of its contents, in its 
imperfect and interpolated manuscript shape, the very imper- 
fect and unsatisfactory mode of its delivery, together with 
other considerations which, though not always avowed, have 
probably, much influence with small authors, has induced the 
writer of this to submit it for publication in this form, with 
this his apology for so doing. 

It may be proper to add, that some emendations and addi- 
tions have since been made to it. That it may be as favorably 
received, as it was patiently heard by his partial and intelli- 
gent audience, the writer has not the vanity to expect or to 
hope for. 



LECTURE. 



******* "The truth is, that the past is not everything; 
nor the future everything; nor the present everything; the intellect of man is 
now neither in its infancy, nor in its decrepitude. — Judge Story. 

Conformable to the commendable usage of deeper and 
higher preachers from a more elevated rostrum, by way of 
indicating the general theme and bearings of their intended 
discourse, the speaker has adopted as his text a sentiment 
from the writings of a learned and distinguished jurist and 
scholar, who now and long has adorned by his wisdom and his 
eloquence the highest judicial tribunal of our country ; and 
very long may such steady and brilliant lights continue to 
adorn them ! But whether there will be found any more clear 
connection or relation than is sometimes recognized in other 
orators of another and a graver class between the text and 
the sermon, remains to be collected from the result. But be 
that result what it may we shall proceed, as best we can do, 
in our somewhat excursive ramblings over a broad and bound- 
less field, in which one hardly knows where to start or when 
to stop ; leaving it pretty much to our intelligent hearers to 
sum up its various heads, and draw from them, if they can, 
a suitable and edifying improvement. 

That " every generation grows wiser and wiser " is a pro- 
verb which it is pretty certain was not first promulgated by 
an octo — or even by a sexa-genarian. The aged are probably 
inclined pretty generally to think that it is a maxim entitled 
to very little respect ; knowing, as they feel that they do, that 
the young shoots which have started up around, and are al- 
ready overtopping them with their luxuriant, aspiring and saucy 
branches, are but fools comparatively to the considerate wisdom 
and treasured experience of their fathers. That there has 



6 

within the last half century been a decided falling off in that 
disinterested spirit of public patriotism, private probity, and 
some of the moral virtues which once prevailed with the gene- 
ration which is passing away, cannot it is believed be justly 
questioned. « Pity it be so ; and more it is a pity." But it 
is not our present purpose to treat upon either the past state or 
the present aspects and future portents of such high matters 
as these :— 

****** "a humbler task be ours, 
These deeper things we leave to mightier powers." 

We do but essay as it were to skim the surface of much 
shoaler and less afflicted waters, on which should the shipwreck 
of a small barque ensue, it will hardly be missed from amongst 
the great fleet of bold and gallant keels which in countless 
numbers throng and plough the wide literary ocean of the 
times. There are however many of the institutions, enter- 
prises, habits, and usages of society in which even to the 
purblind eyes of a sexagenarian (reverential of the past, dis- 
satisfied with the present, and distrustful of the future as such 
are usually and instinctively prone to be,) the present age has 
it must be admitted, decidedly improved upon that which 
preceded it ; the full extent, and great progression of which, 
as compared with the past, those now conversant only with 
the present state of things, can probably hardly realize or 
appreciate. 

We will advert in the first place by way of exemplifying 
our position, as perhaps the most important in itself, and the 
most striking in its developments, to the subject of education ; 
to the advanced grades to which it has been carried and the 
different modes of instruction and inculcation adopted at these 
two periods upon the subjects of it, both in our higher semina- 
ries of learning and in our common schools. As to the latter 
class, the time is well recollected (for the speaker was one 
of the subjects of their stinted instructions) when little be- 
yond Dillworth's Spelling Book, the New England Primer, 
teaching by a double process the first letter of the alphabet, 



and the first doctrine of the creed, through the instrumentali- 
ty of the first poetical distich that the young minstrels of 
future times were taught to jingle together— 

" In Adam's fall, 
We sinned all." 

When these recondite volumes, together with the Psalter, and 
in process of time and of intellectual juvenile development, 
the other portions of the Bible, constituted about the whole 
of the science of common school reading then taught. To 
which when was added a knowledge of an indifferent hand- 
writing, and the first four rules of Arithmetic, and of casting 
interest from Pike's treatise thereon — we have what then 
comprised about the whole of a common school education. 
The school houses too, in which these rudiments of learning 
were taught, were then little better than small barns, fitted up 
with coarse backless benches, on which the uneasy and restless 
urchins sat in both mental and bodily torture, until from 
sheer tedium, and to obtain a little ease to their aching spines, 
they fell half asleep into a recumbent posture, or betook them- 
selves to enacting some antic or mischievous gambols, from 
which they were in due time brought to their bearings by a dex- 
trous stroke of the ever-ready birchen rod, or the still more 
ready, convenient, and double purposed rule, serving in the two- 
fold capacity for forming straight lines on their writing books, 
and in that of a ferule for straightening out the crooked minded 
juveniles who made themselves the proper subjects of these 
magnetizing manipulations; an exercise which in a cold win- 
ter's day was in one respect at least useful and almost neces- 
sary both for the master and the pupil, to put into circulation 
the half congealed blood of their shivering frames, and to 
impart to them that degree of caloric, which the wide open 
fireplace, although constantly and liberally fed with repeated 
arms full of green and crackling fagots failed to do. Such 
was the general range and grade of what was then esteemed 
to be a good country common school education ; and such 
the usual and convenient mode of imparting it in our land, 
about fifty years since. 



8 

In our colleges and other high seminaries of education, a 
state of things much corresponding with this, both as to the 
extent of instruction and the mode of inculcation also existed. 
A slight knowledge of the Latin and Greek Grammars with the 
colloquies of Corderius ; the first four books of Virgil in Latin, 
and the four evangelists in Greek, was the extent of the 
requisite proficiency for entering college ; as to be able to 
construe and parse the whole of Virgil, and of Cicero's Ora- 
tions ; to recite decently Watts' Logic, Blair's Rhetoric, 
Ferguson's Astronomy, Guthrie's Geography, Enfield's Natu- 
ral Philosophy, Priestley's Lectures on History, and to master 
after a sort the whole of Pike's Arithmetic, and Paley's Moral 
Philosophy, with a smattering of Algebra, fluxions, and conic 
sections, constituted pretty much the whole of that circle of 
the learned sciences which entitled the young savan to the 
honors of a graduation, and to the flattering adjunct to his 
name of the first two letters of the alphabet — meaning in 
the vernacular, and endorsing upon his valued sheep-skin the 
flattering cognomen of a " Bachelor of the Arts ! " Although 
not a single word had been taught of the now very useful 
and practical sciences of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Physiology, 
Political Economy, or Geology in general, through the gradu- 
ate's entire course of instruction. Much in correspondence 
with the discipline of the lower schools, and the manner and 
means of teaching " the young idea how to shoot," was that 
of the higher seminaries. We have now in our possession, 
by ancestral descent, a written copy of the laws of the col- 
lege in New Jersey, then called Nassau Hall, and now known 
in common parlance as Princeton College, transcribed in the 
handwriting of one who was an undergraduate there in 1765 ; 
and though this is at a period somewhat more remote than 
the one twenty-five years after, of the general aspects and 
phases of which we have attempted this brief notice, yet 
little alteration in the matters of which this treats had then 
taken place, either in this or its other kindred institutions in 
the United States ; and of the laws, usages, and regulations 
of all which this may without injustice be considered as a 
pretty fair model. We will recount a few of these laws and 



9 

regulations as not unfair samples of the spirit of the age and 
of the times, touching the then existing methods of education 
and discipline with the rising generation who were the sub- 
jects of them. 

Extracts from the Collegiate Code of Princeton College in 
Anno Domini 1765. 

" Every scholar shall keep his hat off about ten rods to the 
president, and about five to the tutors. Every scholar shall 
rise up and make his obeisance when the president goes in or 
out of the hall, or enters the pulpit on days of religious 
worship. When walking with a superior, they shall give him 
the highest place ; and when first coming into his company, 
they shall show their respects to him by pulling off their 
hats ; shall give place to him at any door or entrance, or 
meeting him going up and down stairs, shall stop, giving 
him the banister side ; shall not enter into his room with- 
out knocking at the door, or in any way intrude themselves 
upon him ; and shall never be first or foremost in any under- 
taking in which a superior is engaging or about to engage ; 
shall never use any indecent or rude behavior or action in 
a superior's presence, such as making a noise, calling loud, 
or speaking at a distance, unless spoken to by him, if within 
hearing ; shall always give a direct pertinent answer, con- 
cluding with Sir !" 

There was one of these observatory and conservatory regu- 
lations of so very minute and delicate a nature that it was not 
thought quite proper or decent to enact it in the vernacular 
tongue ; and so they very modestly threw over it the veil of 
the Latin language ; and which we give in the original as 
it stands recorded in the little statute book before us, but shall 
not now translate, even at the hazard of being supposed not 
ready or willing to gratify, as it may be thought we ought 
to do, the laudable and instinctive curiosity of our fair lady 
hearers. It runs thus in the stately language of Cicero and 
of Hortensius ; and with the precision and solemnity of an 
article from the Justinian code. 

" Quicunque contra collegium minxerit, vel ex fenestra 
aliquid sordii ejecierit, mulctetur unum solidum, si repetat 
admoneatur." 

2 



10 

The translation of this grave statute into our vernacular, 
may perhaps furnish a pleasant morning's exercise for some of 
the sophomore classes in the more advanced seminaries in our 
vicinity at the present day. But as the Latin classics are 
altogether eschewed it seems at the " Oneida Institute," it 
might be taken unkindly from us to set one of her Neophytes 
whatever might be the complexion of his general scholarship, 
to dig out quite so difficult a lesson from the dead rubbish of 
their detested heathen Latin, to be recited before a spare 
breakfast ; and we therefore in all tenderness to their feelings 
and sensibilities mercifully forbear pressing this little matter 
any further in that direction. 

Under the absurd and degrading servileance of this servile 
code, we have heard rehearsed by one who was a subject of 
them, many amusing anecdotes of the natural contumacy of 
those free thinking and high spirited students under whose iron 
rule they were attempted to be brought ; and the ingenious 
modes which they sometimes resorted to for the purpose of 
defeating or evading the weight of their absurd penalties. In 
order to escape from the requirements of striking his colors, and 
doffing his chapeau when within the prescribed striking distance 
from the venerable president or the dignified tutors — young 
Ellsworth, who afterwards rose to the honorable rank of 
chief justice of the United States and to many other elevated 
stations in this country, and who was then a student there, cut 
off entirely the brim portion of his hat, leaving of it nothing but 
the crown, which he wore in the form of a skull cap on his 
head, and putting it under his arm when he approached their 
reverences. Being reproved for his perversity, and told that 
this was not a hat within the meaning and intent of the law 
which he was required to do his obeisance with, by removing 
it from his head, he then made bold to wear his skull cap into 
the chapel and recitation rf om, in presence of the authority. 
Being also then again reproved for wearing his hat in those 
forbidden and sacred places, he replied, that he had once sup- 
posed that it was in truth a veritable hat ; but having been 
informed by his superiors that it was no hat at all, he had ven- 
tured to come into their presence as he supposed with his head 



11 

uncovered by that proscribed garment. But this dilemma was r 
as in his former position decided against him ; and no other 
alternative remained to him but to resume his full brimmed 
beaver and to comply literally with the enactments of the 
collegiate pandect. 

In old Yale, of which venerable institution, the speaker 
was some fifty years since a rather troublesome and justly 
troubled member, this and other like absurd ordinances and 
observances existed and were prescribed for the students to 
observe towards the existing authority, and between the dif- 
ferent classes in the same institution. Such as the freshman 
class being subjected to be made the waiters and servitors of 
the upper classes in doing their errands on the most trifling 
and humbling occasions ; in carrying and fetching their soil- 
ed or washed linen to and from the laundress, and bringing 
their beer, tobacco and pipes wherewith to regale themselves 
at their assembled parties and junketings ; a power which was 
often shamefully and wantonly abused by one party, but gen- 
erally rigorously enforced against the other by the authorities 
of the college ; (who had themselves gone through the same 
trying ordeal,) by the way as they said of accustoming the 
green and yet flexible freshman to the restraints of whole- 
some discipline, and the salutary habits of obedience to his 
superiors in age and rank. 

We wish that we could with truth recapitulate, as an offset 
to these deficiences and absurdities, the superior state of moral 
discipline, and of social habits and recreations which distin- 
guished these high seats of learning at the same period. But 
the college buttery kept under its roof, in a place of the most 
convenient access, with its viands of cakes, pies, nuts, beer, 
cider, mead and (" sub rosa,") cheap and adulterated wines, 
tempting the prurient appetites of the listless idler, would rise 
up in swift judgment against us ; as they do against the hoary 
wisdom which thus encouraged their wholly needless and 
injurious indulgence ; while the almost unrestricted intermin- 
gling in the social enjoyments, amusements and dissipations 
of the town or city around them, led to no good, and frequently 
to a ruinous relaxation of every studious habit, and- not unfre- 



12 

quently into the paths of vicious irregularity and irreclaimable 
dissipation. 

And as to the intellectual education of the female portion 
of the last century, how little more have we to say than that 
they learned at their transient country schools, taught by some 
smart spinster, to read passably in the Bible ; to repeat there, 
and on Saturday or Sunday evenings at home, the Shorter 
Catechism, which, if they fully understood when they had got 
through it, they certainly had sharper intellects than had some 
of their teachers ; to get by heart Watts' Spiritual Songs ; 
scrawl a miserable handwriting; and if deemed apt proficients, 
and ambitious of teaching others in their turn, to dig out their 
way through the first four rules of Arithmetic. Of the general 
Geography of the globe which they inhabited, there was hardly 
a book extant teaching it in our country, until Morse came 
out with his first octavo edition, from which they could 
learn it ; and as to Moral Philosophy and Astronomy, they 
were as far removed from their knowledge, as were the fixed 
stars from their reach or adequate comprehension. No Sun- 
day schools, Bible classes, benevolent associations or literary 
and scientific lectures for the benefit either of the young or 
old of either sex, for their improvement and edification in the 
higher branches of science, and to fit them for any other than 
the every day domestic duties of a listless life. 

"What in most of these respects is now the improved state 
and condition both of our common schools and our higher 
literary institutions, this more intelligent age and audience 
need not to be informed ; a great portion of those before us 
having partaken and profited under their more enlarged and 
improved systems of instruction and of discipline, and they 
will not probably hesitate long in coming to the rational 
conclusion that in these respects at least the present genera- 
tion have 

-" Grown wiser than their fathers were." 

Whether they would be sustained in assuming also to have 
realized the other line of Watts' distich, 

" And better know the Lord," 



13 

is quite another question, which it is feared will hardly ohtain 
so strong and undivided an affirmative verdict "ye yourselves 
being judges." Thus much in exposition of the advances 
and improvements made and introduced within the last half 
century in relation to the subjects and methods of intellectual 
education. 

We will pass on to some other topics connected with these 
bearings of our subject. We might allude here as a sample 
of the staid and stereotype habits of that age, to the time 
when our revered Doctors of Divinity and their less honored 
and untitled brethren made it the main object of their 
weekly labors to attempt to untie the five knotty points of 
their religious creed, by two long and highly elaborated ser- 
mons a week, devoted chiefly to that favored topic in the 
prevailing theology of the day. When the clergyman liter- 
ally and usually settled himself as in a secure harbor in his 
parish for life, and rarely left it until his body was carried to 
his last and final abode, followed by the tears and regrets 
of his bereaved, affectionate, and ever-trusting parishioners. 
And when a worthy country gentleman who once sufficiently 
obtained the favor of his town or county to be honored with 
a seat in the public councils of his country, rarely lost it 
except through his gross misconduct, or became incompetent 
to its duties by the infirmities of age or disease, or by death. 
But those days and those usages are long since past, with the 
shadowy personages who acted their important dramatic parts 
in their great theatres of action and of renown ; and other 
actors and far other scenes have opened upon those which 
preceded them. Now, a stated clergyman has hardly got 
acquainted with the people of his charge, and learned the 
shortest way to his pulpit, before his best seasoned sermons 
begin to fall " stale, flat and unprofitable," upon the better 
cultivated and more fastidious taste of his hearers, and he is 
pretty soon served by them with a gentle hint, and if that be 
not sufficient, with a loud warning that it is high time for 
him to pull up his stakes and to quit, and give place to some 
one who will furnish them at least for a time, some more sat- 
isfactory and inviting viands of intellectual and religious fare. 



14 

And although there are doubtless many inconveniences, and 
some hardship and injustice growing out of these modern 
deviations from " the good old paths," in which our venerable 
fathers were accustomed to walk, yet we cannot say that this 
change upon the whole, (ill advised and capricious as may 
often be the practice under it,) is not quite as favorable to 
the mutual improvement of both parson and parishioner, as it 
may be more conformable to the progressive spirit of the age, 
and the ** go-a-head " disposition of the times. 

And as to the official permanence now-a-days, of our elec- 
tive public servants, (very " humble servants" indeed they 
usually are to us, at least just before an election ;) that of the 
dancing figures in a puppet show, which the political game in 
more than one respect much resembles, is hardly more 
changeful and evanescent. To be danced up the great exhi- 
bition hall, without much merit one year, and danced down it 
without much crime the next, is the pretty general bill of fare 
for those sort of entertainments ; and whether this course of 
things be a modern improvement in our system of experimen- 
ting, may perhaps be left as a doubtful and unsolved case. 
Although it is certainly not to be much complained of by him 
who having very often been admitted into the temple of 
honor upon pretty loose and easy terms, should he be very 
soon asked to walk out of it, when his company has become 
unwelcome, from pretty slight causes too. " Light come, 
light go," is a maxim whose truth is sustained by the 
experience of the world ; and that " what comes over the 
devil's back, should go under his belly," is a result at once 
natural and consequential. And so we leave that question 
as a moot point for further advisement and consideration. 
" Curia advisare vult." 

Saying nothing about those vast improvements in mechan- 
ical inventions and the arts, which have so immeasurably 
multiplied and increased every sort of product and manufac- 
ture, either for use or ornament, within the period designated, 
we will advert only to two or three particulars ; such as 
facilities for personal transportation and for trade ; and habits 
tof social entertainment and modes of dress ; matters falling 



15 

within the common observation and every day business of 
all, in which the modern innovations have been decidedly for 
the better. For instance, it is within a little more than fifty 
years' recollection, that but a single line of public stages was 
run on this continent. This was on the seaboard between Bos- 
ton and Philadelphia. They made progress in two days, with 
good luck, from Boston to Springfield, not quite a hundred 
miles. But they often fell short of this when the roads were 
bad, and took a part of the third day to effect it ; such was 
once the speaker's luck when a youthful passenger in one of 
their heavy wagon-like coaches. The same route by al- 
mighty steam is now run over in five hours, quite too early 
for dinner. And so it is now on all the great routes of the 
country. Quite an improvement certainly for a traveller who 
is in a hurry, which every American traveller always is. It 
may however well be questioned, whether any more individual 
comfort is taken, or improvement made in this modern mode 
than was in those days by the New England or Dutch farmer, 
who after he had done up his early fall work, took into his 
strong wagon drawn by a pair of his fat horses, his wife, and 
a son or daughter or two, and started on a family visit to his 
distant friends and relatives ; drove perhaps forty-five miles in 
a day, partaking by the way, of the good cold cut, biscuit and 
dough nuts which they carried with them ; surveyed and 
talked over amongst themselves all the new objects which 
their leisurely progress gave them full opportunity to observe 
on the way ; put up at night at a comfortable country tavern ; 
and after a warm and quiet supper retired to a good night's 
rest ; and rose refreshed for another day's interesting and un- 
hurried travel. How different this musing meandering course 
from the crazing, unobservant, lightning-like speed, and the 
pulling and hauling which characterize our present rail road 
and steam boat mode of darting through the world at the rate 
of " thirty knots the hour ! " Single horse wagons were then 
unknown. They are the invention of the last thirty five 
years, and were called Dearborns, from the circumstance of 
General Dearborn having journeyed in one of them, in a part 
of the country where it was a novelty a little before the last 



16 

British war. A gig or chaise, as it was then called, was be- 
fore that time its only substitute for a single carriage, although 
that was owned by but a few comparatively, out of the large 
cities. The speaker crossed the Green Mountains between 
the Connecticut and Housatonic rivers, in the first one that 
was ever driven over them, where now travellers fly by steam 
at the rate of twenty-five or thirty miles the hour, as before 
mentioned. In the country villages, both the clergyman and 
his parishioners, who had occasion to go any considerable 
distance to meeting or to visit, and who could not afford to 
keep a double horse wagon, took their wives "a pillion" behind 
them ; perhaps with one small child on the pummel of his 
saddle, and she with another, if they were blessed with so 
many, in her lap. Such equitations have been seen often by 
many eyes now living. A sight of one of them at this day 
would attract as much notice in our streets as would that of 
a caravan or menagerie of wild beasts. This was not a very 
comfortable mode of "going ahead ;" and our country gen- 
tlemen and their families of this day, do much better in their 
modern gigs, buggies and calashes. 

Then as to some of the habits of living and the modes of 
social entertainment, matters are clearly much mended since 
the time when the country clergyman and his deacons took 
their regular forenoon Jlip or toddy, and those of the city 
their hot or cool punch, according to the season, before din- 
ner ; and when knotty points of divinity were discussed in 
their social circles by Doctors Hopkins, Emmons, West, 
and other lesser lights of the church, under a cloud of tobac- 
co smoke, so thick as nearly to suffocate a rash unseasoned 
intruder from the heedless world who rushed thoughtlessly into 
their presence from the fresh air without ; and ever and 
anon, when the argument in hand slackened a little, its thread 
was strengthened by the application of a little "hard cider," 
from the silver can or tankard which stood on the side-table 
or cupboard ready filled for their reverend use. These are 
no fancy pictures ; they are sketched from the once living 
and acting originals, which are still vivid before us, and quorum 
pars parva fuimus ; so far at least as to bring the pipes, fill 



17 

the tankard, and reverence deeply the congregated wisdom 
and piety in the best parlor then and there assembled. Now, 
forsooth, a clergyman or a deacon must be careful and not 
take too much even of old wine by way of medicine ; or he 
will be shewn up alamode the Reverend Doctor Sprague in 
some Temperance Recorder, as no thorough te-totaller at any 
rate. And this altered condition of things is, notwithstanding 
some unreasonable and uncharitable annoyances incident to 
its requirements, clearly a great advance and improvement 
upon the treasured and venerable " wisdom of our revered 
ancestors." 

Then again as to our personal costume and the fashion of 
our dress. (I speak only of that of the gentlemen, not ventur- 
ing to meddle with so ticklish a subject as that of the ladies.) 
Although one can hardly avoid snatching a furtive sideway 
glance, as their departed shadows pass in tempting retrospect 
before him, at the spindling stilts in the form of what were 
called stick heels, on which our venerable matrons of that day 
used to elevate their stately forms about four inches above 
their natural stature ; and the wide spreading expanders of 
their delicate dimensions called hoops, with which they encir- 
cled themselves, in order to enlarge by a few degrees the 
already liberal circumference of their equatorial regions. Of 
the modern substitutes for these outre and hollow appliances, 
we, at our time of life, may reasonably be supposed to observe 
and to know nothing ; and of course shall venture to say 
nothing. This being, perhaps, also one of those uncome-ata- 
ble and nice cases depending upon exact mensuration and close 
scrutiny in which a fair comparison between ancient and 
modern dimensions would be a difficult and delicate task ; 
and on that and other accounts probably " the least said the 
soonest mended." And we make our escape gladly from out 
of the range of these formidable female entrenchments, to the 
more manageable dress, costume and habiliments of the gen- 
tlemen of that age and time. For of all things, we should 
dislike to get into a bustle with the Amazonian phalanx here 
or elsewhere ; as in such an unequal war the least we could 
expect would be to have the whole army of bishops in their 
3 



18 

full and formidable armory down upon us. We would sedu- 
lously avoid, at our time of life, doing any thing that might 
reasonably lead to a state of belligerency with our fellow be- 
ings of any sex, cast, or character. But if in the pursuit of 
duty dictated, or obligation assumed, "offences must needs 
come," and civil contests are not to be honorably avoided, let 
them come off rather with the bluff race of whiskerandos, with 
whose tactics and stratagems we are more familiar, and can 
better grapple with and circumvent. And therefore taking 
our respectful leave of these our "fair daughters of Israel," we 
" turn ourselves again unto the Gentiles " of our own sex, 
with whom as more irreclaimable reprobates is to be found 
our main business. 

The dress of the gentlemen of the present day is in the 
main a great and decided improvement over the old fashions, 
both in point of convenience and rational appearance. There 
were then the white broad bottomed wigs of the clergy, which 
as they passed, the children of the parish made their manners 
to, and a portion of the parishioners, (not all old women nei- 
ther,) almost worshipped in breach of the second command- 
ment — had the object bowed down to, been like unto any 
other thing, to be found in either of the upper, nether, or lower 
kingdoms of creation, which it was not ; only that by way of 
a slant upon it, some of the wicked boys used, when they 
got among themselves, to call it "a nanny." There were in 
proper keeping with these, the red scarlet coats and cloaks of 
the high dignitaries of civil office, nearly blinding the eyes 
of the common people with the glare of their imposing majes- 
ty ; and when, as is well recollected, the governors of the 
plain people of Massachusetts used to exhibit themselves on 
election and other great gala days, equipped in a full suit of 
crimson silk velvet ; a most gaudy and attractive spectacle 
to the young admirers of official splendor, and the high dig- 
nity of " God's vicegerents," the exalted rulers of the people. 
And then the famous cocked hats too, instar omnium, which 
were mounted, of course, by every decent gentleman who as- 
pired to be a leading man in his town, or to cut a respectable 
and commanding figure in his weekly goings forth to and 



19 

from the parish meeting house. All these unnatural and in- 
convenient habiliments have given place to plain, substantial 
broadcloth or cotton, which much better defends against wind 
and weather ; to plain unfrizzled and uncrisped locks (to say 
nothing of the sedulously cultivated and valued whiskers) 
which will bear wet and stormy as well as dry and calm 
weather ; and to uncocked broad brim hats, which are per- 
mitted to spread out and protect the eyes and the face of the 
wearer from the rays of the sun and the inclemencies of the 
different seasons. But the picture of a full-dressed beau or 
dandy of that or a little later day, would throw quite into the 
shade the most finished specimens of that genus butterfly of 
the present times ; as the former would be quite a curiosity 
in our streets now, we will attempt a crayon sketch of his 
costume, for the benefit of his successors in that line, whom 
he so much outshone in every essential absurdity, however 
highly the latter may think of their own prowess and enter- 
prise in that line. Imprimis, a dark green or blue broadcloath 
coat, high standing cape of white or crimson velvet, with two 
rows of buttons covered with gold or silver tinsel, about the 
size of a dollar ; vest of white or buff* colored kerseymere, 
gaily embroidered with colored silk, and adorned with gold 
or silver cord and spangles ; short breeches of the same, or 
satin of any fancied color, made to as close a fit as his own 
worthless dog skin, and fastened at the knee by large silk 
bows or stone knee buckles ; white silk stockings with open 
clock work ; with an apology for shoes, in the form of light 
pumps, merely covering the toes and the bottom of the feet, 
surmounted by a proportionate buckle ; a full plaited wide 
ruffle, pendant out from the bosom and the wristbands of the 
shirt ; a cravat stuffed with cotton padding so as to bring it 
even with the chin, helping the empty headed wearer to hold 
his head up in the world without much effort, and less merit ; 
the hair saturated with pomatum and powder, craped or friz- 
zled into a rising cushion before, and with the additional 
splicing on of a false queue, twisted and turned up behind into 
a club about the size of his wrist ; something like a half hour's 
operation this ; but it made fine times for the barbers, who 



20 

were nearly ruined when the democratic habits and fashions 
introduced by the French revolution made it popular for every 
would-be patriot and aspiring demagogue at least, to wear his 
hair a la croppe, and appear in a rather slouching and careless 
costume throughout. The country bumpkins satisfied their 
hair brained aspirations in that line with suspending from the 
back of their necks a twelve inch eel-skin appendage, which, 
when early and successfully cultivated and attended to, hung 
down to their hips, and had it have been first discovered in 
an African wilderness, might not unnaturally have been mis- 
taken by a native for the lapsed tail of some unfortunate 
monkey then and there accustomed to wander, and shorn of 
his pendant honors in an unlucky foray with one of his bel- 
ligerent fellows. But 1 had almost forgotten our fashionables' 
boots, extended up to the knee bands, to which they were 
fastened by straps and buckles attached thereto, with fair 
white tops, and peaked toes ; the legs made elastic like India 
rubber by what was called putting a tuck in them ; and 
when drawn on as they were by many a hard effort, fitting 
all the way to the limb like a tight stocking. 

Such is a synopsis of the full bodily equipment of a fine 
gentleman of most of our principal cities and villages about 
the year 1793. In the remote country towns these were vied 
with and imitated, though at a very humble distance, as we 
had then no rail roads to convey the ever-changing patterns 
and fashions in due season, and few mechanics who were 
competent to getting them up in a proper style. Now our 
present fashions and modes of dress, even the most outre of 
them, are altogether more rational, convenient and comforta- 
ble than those which we have truly and without exaggeration 
chronicled and reported. 

It is we believe, a well ascertained fact from authentic sta- 
tistical tables, imperfect and scanty as those yet are in this 
country, that notwithstanding the increased dissipation of 
time, of money, and of morals, in the large cities and towns, 
and amongst certain classes of society, there is yet a gradual 
diminution of mortality, and an average prolongation of hu- 
man life with the great mass of society, compared with any 



21 

former period. In England and Europe in general this is a 
still better ascertained and marked fact, and is thus stated 
from a work of good authority. 

" Since 1650, all the counties of Europe, as well as the 
principal towns, present a gradual diminution of mortality. 
The value of life has doubled in London in the last century, 
and in many cities the probability of life to a citizen has 
gradually become five times greater. The increased salubrity 
is referable to various causes; the principal of which are the 
improved condition of the lower classes of society as regards 
food, clothing and fuel ; better habits as respect cleanliness, 
ventilation, and the use of spirituous liquors, and improved 
medical practice, especially in preventive means." 

The same effects, owing much doubtless to the same causes, 
have been ascertained to have taken place in this country, 
where careful inquiries have been instituted. All this too, 
denotes progress, and not retrocession and declension, in the 
course of human affairs, both here and elsewhere. 

In most of the enterprises and habits which we have glanced 
at, there has then been obviously a great and undeniable ad- 
vance and improvement in the means and modes of efficient 
enterprise, of social and individual enjoyment, and the gene- 
ral well being of society. And in these respects certainly 
those who ask "why were the former days better than these?" 
do not " inquire wisely." This is one side of the picture. 
Would that we could congratulate ourselves as surely, touch- 
ing our higher destinies for the future, and upon our having 
made as great advances in the road of public patriotism, per- 
sonal honor and integrity, and private morality. But in these 
regards it will probably be universally acknowledged that we 
have but little to boast of as yet ; although we have not the 
heart to add, that we have less still to hope for. 

We will but glance briefly at the present position and pros- 
pects of civil and social society, as affected and portended 
by the " signs of the times," and as developed through the 
new or increased agencies which have been brought to bear 
upon them. The speaker is by no means prone to be carried 
away with the idea, that we are always living in the midst of 
some particular and portentous crisis. He has lived to see so 



22 

many such alledged or predicted ones, both in the moral, 
social and political world, pass off without any disastrous 
concussion, or any very essential or wonderful change in the 
existing order of things, to expect much more from their oc- 
currence or effect upon the general state of human affairs at 
any particular time. Whether it be from a somewhat differ, 
ent habit of viewing things, growing out of more advancing 
years, and increasing infirmity of nerves, he will not affirm. 
But from a general view of the great movements of the age, 
and the strange " signs of the times," at the present day, it 
would seem as though the new and surprising developments 
which have of late years, and are now manifesting themselves 
in the elements and powers, both of the physical and moral 
world, have a natural and inevitable tendency to lead, as they 
have in many respects already led, to some new and surpris- 
ing results into the future condition of human affairs, and in 
the state and destiny of man in his relations to himself and 
to the world. 

Through a new combination and application of some of the 
material elements, the resistless agency of the printing press, 
and the almost omnipotent power of steam, forces have been 
applied and faculties created or enlarged to a degree which 
has made of civilized man, as it were, a new race of giants or 
anakims, both for the purpose of useful productiveness and 
conservatism on the one hand, and for that of mutual destruc- 
tion, waste, and annoyance, multiplied more than a thousand 
fold, on the other. Cotemporaneously with this increased 
and unprecedented power of these natural physical agents and 
servants to man wielded by human power, the mind of man 
itself seems from some quarter or other also to have received 
some new active and irrepressible impulses. He has discern- 
ed as he thinks within himself and his fellows, new and start- 
ling powers and faculties heretofore but faintly dreamed of; 
giving him new relations both to himself and to all existence 
around him, or in the more remote portions of the universe ; 
such, substantially is the new science of Phrenology, with its 
carryings out of animal magnetical influences and operations 
upon the human system ; through the agency of which there 



23 

are certainly some wonderful, and as yet unexplained pheno- 
mena in relation to the nature and powers of the mind in its 
connection with the body which it inhabits and with the 
mind and bodies of others. Another portion of mankind 
have discovered as they think, and so confidently believe and 
teach, new disclosures or revelations of wonderful and porten- 
tous events touching man's immediate destiny which are very 
soon to open and display themselves upon the human vision. 
Such is the new and increasing sect calling themselves "New 
Adventarians," now numbering their thousands in some of 
the most enlightened portions of this country; who confidently 
declare to us, that within a very few months is to be witnessed 
" a new heaven and a new earth," and man and all his pre- 
sent works are then to be changed and " pass away with a 
great noise " forever. It would appear from the history of 
the world however that such like portending auguries and pre- 
dictions are not entirely of modern growth and cultivation. 
The prurient spirit which prompts to them, was as Horace tells 
us, moving upon the face of the troubled waters of the Roman 
Empire in the age of the Caesars and the Antonines : 

****** << Terruit urbem, 
Terruit gentes, grave ne rediret 
Steculum Pyrrhfe, nova monstra questae." 

When cities and when nations terror-struck, 
Shook with the fear of Pyrrha's dreaded age r 
Portended monsters and " chimeras dire." 

But all these and many other like auguries and vaticinations 
have long since, with their self-deceived and deceiving pro- 
phets, seers, and soothsayers, passed away into the land of 
shadows ; but " the earth abideth," still continuing to revolve 
as before in its divinely appointed sphere, steadfast and unjos- 
tled amidst the conflict of the elements, and the rise and fall 
of its ephemeral tenants and occupants. 

"Fluit, fluit, et semper cucurret amnis." 
It rolls and rolls, and shall forever Toll. 

We would not, because it is not necessary for our present 
purpose, either affirm or deny anything either of the truth cr 



24 

soundness of many of these speculations, claims, principles, 
discoveries or predictions, (although the speaker has formed 
no doubting or concealed opinions on them for himself;) and 
we enlarge nothing upon the wide spread delusions of Mor- 
monism, no church organization, no human government, and 
various other transcendentalisms of the times, which occupy 
and agitate the heaving billows of the human mind, at the 
present day. But under these aspects, is not this already 
almost " a new world," compared with any that has been 
known before it ; with new natural elements and agents ; or 
what is nearly the same, new applications and combinations 
of the old ones ; producing new results, impulses, develop- 
ments, and operations of matter and of mind, before incredi- 
ble and almost undreamed of, or imagined by the wildest 
fancy ? In some of these relations the intellectual powers of 
man, would appear to have outstripped his moral cultivation ; 
the centrifugal forces to have become disproportioned to the 
centripetal ones, and which at times, for want of some effec- 
tive balance wheel, seem to threaten the fatal disadjustment or 
destruction of the impetuous machine which it impels. 

Another grave question is, can this sweeping tide of many 
rushing waters now be expected to recede, or to stand still 
where it is ? It may, it is believed, be considered as pretty 
certain that it will do neither. It must in the natural order 
of things, and in the nature of man himself, be expected still 
to press onward and upward, driven by the ever increasing 
steam-forced powers and passions of man's restless and strug- 
gling spirit ; to what end, and in what final consummation, 
he only who permits and governs it can, as it would seem to 
us, at all with any certainty predict. These new agencies 
and energies, when directed and inspired by the spirit of love 
and humanity, and impelled by angelic hands, are indeed ca- 
pable of, and tending to much good, and of imparting much 
benefit and comfort to the human race ; but, when driven by 
the spirit of devilism and hatred, are equally capable of, and 
tending to much misery and desolation through this fair crea- 
tion of God, which under its influences and its heaving 
" ground swells," must, it would seem erelong become either 



25 

a paradise or a pandemonium, according to the direction 
which its enhanced powers and forces should happen or by the 
hand of the Great Architect himself be directed to take and 
be applied to. It is not as of old the common " potsherds ■' 
striving with the old " potsherds of the earth," but it will be 
as it were a new and enlarged race of human monsters fight- 
ing the great battle of Gog and Magog, and like Milton's 
devils in the infernal regions, hurling mountains and oceans 
at each other, whenever there may come on a general conflict 
amongst them, either individually or in national or civil con- 
tests of the masses. 

And what is the position and aspect of this, our own coun- 
try, amidst this general fermentation and excitement of matter 
and of mind, and this threatened turmoil and conflict of the 
elements of nature and of life ? How stand our great politi- 
cal and civil institutions and the social and moral principles 
upon which they depend for their existence and perpetuity ? 
Where, to touch upon one point only, is the adhesive power, 
which is to hold together our national confederacy in its effec- 
tive power and strength much longer? Many of the states 
have already ceased to regard, not only their own solemn ob- 
ligations to themselves and their individual and corporate 
obligees, but also those to the Union itself, when they conflict, 
or seem to conflict at all with their own supposed temporary 
interest, or with the selfish views of a local and aspiring fac- 
tion among themselves, who may have siezed upon the rule 
and conduct of their affairs. And there seems to be no inhe- 
rent and adequate power to compel the delinquents or recu- 
sants to a compliance with those obligations. And neither in 
the national or state councils, does there appear to be, as it 
may be feared, sufficient moral power and responsibility left 
to resist effectually the sweeping floods of faction, passion and 
venality which too often overwhelm and counteract every 
better principle. And when we see intelligent and leading 
men in our legislative bodies getting up, and gravely main- 
taining what they must know to be the most palpable and 
untenable absurdities, touching constitutional and moral rights 
and obligations ; a majority of such bodies sanctioning, and 



26 

a parly press universally sustaining and echoing them — can 
we fail to see that constitutional ligaments are but cobwebs, 
and the moral sense but as smoking flax, in the reckless hands 
of our strong political Sampsons, when they have a sinister 
purpose to answer by rending or disregarding them ? We 
apply not here these remarks and strictures, to any such poli- 
tical party as we may suppose more especially to deserve 
them : qui capit, illefacit ; let those who feel that they may 
deserve them make their own application. 

And in view of all these considerations, with their apparent 
and obvious tendencies, and prospective portents, we are at 
times, though but rarely, almost disposed to yield to the de- 
sponding prediction of an old and experienced political friend, 
now attached to no existing party, » that we have not impro- 
bably seen the last presidential election under the constitution 
of 1788." These are unpleasent and perhaps extravagant 
and too sombre views of "the present and the future." But 
it can surely do no harm to look at them for a moment, im- 
probable and distant as they may seem to us to be, and little 
as we may regard in themselves the supposed wild and fanatic 
delusions of the day. Are they not all pregnant indications 
at least of the pent-up winds, wrestling, and the storm and 
tempest struggling for deliverance within their dark and deep 
recesses 1 At any rate, the most obtuse mind, and the least 
acute sensibility cannot fail to discern in the events and as- 
pects of " the present," enough to awaken and engage all it's 
powers of observation and reflection, with however much cool- 
ness, placidity and unconcern he may look forward upon the 
prospects and foreshadowings of " the future." 

As this is the age of " progress," and the day of "radical re- 
reform," a few suggestions on the spirit and tendency of some 
of the efforts made and making in this behalf, from one who 
from necessity, rather than from disinclination has been ra- 
ther an observer of, than a participator in their movements 
and operations, may not be altogether out of place or charac- 
ter in connection with our general subject. 

Approving as we do of the principles, partaking of the gene- 
ral views, and sympathising in the aspirations of many of the 



27 

*• men of progress," and tho professed reformers of the ago and 
the times, there are at least two particulars in their modus ope~ 
randi, for producing their professedly desired results, which we 
can neither approve, partake of, or participate in ; since, aa 
appears to us, they are entirely at war with their first great 
professed principle, of the " largest liberty," and exceedingly 
ill adapted to attain their favorite object. One is that which 
can probably not be better described or defined than by calling 
it by a homemade but very expressive word "one-idealism ;" 
that is, when an ardent, self-opinated, perhaps ambitious man 
has strongly imbibed one idea, or enlisted himself to effect one 
particular object, that he should then think and act as though 
he believed that the only one in the world worthy of pursuit; 
and to make an adherence to, and engagedness in it both 
in kind and degree an exclusive test of general character, both 
in religious, political and social life ; saying to others who 
have moved not yet quite so far or so fast in his steam-tra- 
velled path, " get out of my way ;" or like the Pharisee of 
old, "stand you by, I am holier than thou." Thus in truth, 
attempting to work his way by the law of force, and by no 
means by that which they usually profess, that of universal 
love and Christian kindness. These most usually run to be 
sure at starting, a most rapid and hurried race ; but at the 
same time an equally short and fruitless one. Need we go 
very far from home to realize the existence and exercise of 
such a spirit and temper, and to look for its natural results? 

It began amongst us with the breaking forth of the Auti 
Masonic excitement, just and rightful perhaps in its general 
principles, and stimulated to action by the abuses of the ob- 
noxious institution which it was its professed aim to overthrow 
and subvert. But both in church and state, its zealous parti, 
sans endeavored, and, to a certain extent, and within certain 
limits succeeded in making that the peculiar test question of 
the day, both for the enjoyment of the rites and ordinances of 
the former, and for the exercise of the political and civil offi- 
ces of the latter. Their success, was as we all know, short 
lived and evanescent ; and now Anti Masonry has long been 
a departed phantom, or a dead carcase, which few think of, 



28 

and fewer still care to regard. Then came the Temperance 
reform, admirable and beneficient in its principles, happy in 
its legitimate results upon the well being of society, and highly 
promotive of individual happiness. But that too, must be 
made as its engaged advocates said, another test question ; and 
we had Temperance tickets for elective offices, and total ab- 
stinence tests for admittance to the rites and ordinances of 
the church ; followed up in some states by the penalties of 
legal enactments, and "fifteen gallon measures" wherewith 
to guage the appetites and the consciences of the rum and 
whiskey drinkers. How all these projects ended we need not 
to be informed. But the " Washingtonians" the more wise 
and discreet successors of these zealous reformers, have now 
found out and reduced to practice "a more excellent way." 
And what has been and still is their much greater progress 
and success, we also well know. Then came the " Abolition- 
ists," (technically so called,) with an equally rigid and still 
broader test ; comprehending both sins of commission and 
omission ; and excluding from their communion both civil 
and ecclesiastical, not only all who acted against their views 
touching the question of slavery, but all who shewed not them- 
selves hearty, zealous, and out-spoken co-actors in their assem- 
blies and associations ; denouncing the old tests of religious 
communion and political confidence on the one hand, as 
anti Christian and anti social, and setting up new and nar- 
rower ones on the other, as requisites for admission into their 
fraternities and associations, which they presumptously deno- 
minate "the only true Christian Church or community." 
With one voice vehement for " the largest liberty " of con- 
science and of action, and with the same voice instituting 
the most abject slavery of the mind as the only pass way to 
their favorable regard ; and even avowing as has one of their 
" class leaders," " that he would not employ a shoe black for his 
boots who would not first qualify himself for his employment 
by adopting his creed on this test question of his character." 
How narrow and unjustifiable in themselves, how contrary to 
the free spirit of the age, at variance with their own professed 
general principles, and what a snail paced tortoise like progress 



29 

these reformers of our civil and religious institutions have 
heen making or are likely to make with their cause under the 
exercise of such principles and measures, it needs no wizard 
or prophet to reveal to us. 

And now in these latter days, have risen a new race of 
reformers and religionists before alluded to, and known as 
" New Adventarians," who boldly denounce all other classes 
who are engaged in other objects and speculations, as " blind 
leaders of the blind," and as employed in pursuits utterly vain 
and worthless, in view of that great " consummation of all 
things," and in the contemplation of which, as they maintain, 
every faculty should be employed, and every sense and aspi- 
ration be absorbed. And to most or all of these heterogeneous, 
and yet in one sense homogeneous classes of "one idea" spe- 
culatists and reformers may not inaptly be applied Cowper's 
characteristic description : — 

" No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest, 
Till all mankind were like himself possess'd. 

Discoverers of they know not what, confined, 
Within no bounds — the blind that lead the blind." 

All these intolerant and illiberal dogmas and projects pro- 
ceed on the narrow and false assumption that there is but one 
single test of moral or social character varying with the age 
or the circumstances surrounding the subject of it ; whereas 
man is not only " a bundle of habits," but also his moral cha- 
racter is made up of various and mixed ingredients all of 
which should be possessed in due proportion to each other, 
and cultivated with equal care, in order to compose a perfect 
and harmonious whole, and those are but moral quacks and 
empirics who would thus disjoin and repudiate all but one item 
of them. 

The other great error, if not sin of many of these refor- 
mers of the age it is conceived is, their often appealing both 
in their writing and oral inculcations, in the style of a design- 
ing demagogue, to the lower passions and propensities of the 
mixed mass whom they would influence in order to propitiate 



30 

their favor, and gain a portion of them to their particular 
views on the subjects which they would urge upon their atten- 
tion. Depicting to what in common parlance are commonly 
denominated the lower and poorer classes in society, the great 
and unjust inequality of their condition compared with that 
of the higher and more opulent ones. Forgetful or wholly 
regardless of how that inequality may have arisen or been 
brought about, whether through providential dispensations, or 
the different degrees of talent, industry, and good habits of 
the different subjects of each. This course of treatment of 
the diseased state of human society, even when not practiced 
as it is to be apprehended it too often is, from a spirit of mis- 
chievous and ambitious demagoguery, is not without its many 
dangers and abuses. 

And at the hazard of being esteemed an obdurate, hide- 
bound conservative, which we must repeat, we are far, very 
far from being, we would venture to throw out our apprehen- 
sions, whether the style in which they insist upon inculcating, 
and the extent to which they are in the habit of pushing their 
doctrines and their teachings as to certain topics of the day, 
is not of very questionable justice and good effect. Not, 
therefore, in relation to many of their general views of the 
present position and relations of civil and social society, but 
in sincerity and in apprehensive earnestness would we suggest 
for their sober consideration, whether in the way in which 
they often treat of these matters, there is not great danger 
that in dwelling upon the natural equality of all men and their 
undoubted equal right to life, its enjoyments and blessings, 
contrasting them as they do in vivid colors with the general 
state of practical inequality, in the means of obtaining them 
which actually exists in all the various departments of civil, 
domestic and social life ; whether this is not too frequently 
done in a manner and to an extent quite as much calculated 
to stir up the envy and the hatred of one class against the other, 
and to incite the former to forcible and unlicensed methods of 
obtaining their different objects and desires, as it is to conciliate 
the sympathies, and excite the humane efforts of the other 
class to remedy these evils, so far as may be practicable, con- 



31 

sistent with the fixed laws of nature and the superior rewards 
consequent upon and due to the superior efforts of industry 
and moral virtue. Let us dwell perpetually and vividly upon 
one side of this question to perhaps an improvident man who 
has but a cold potatoe for his dinner, while his more fortunate, 
perhaps more provident neighbor has a rich surloin of beef 
and its trimmings for his, and it is a great and may be made 
an almost irrepressible temptation to the former to resolve up- 
on restoring the unequal balance of this hard inequality by 
any means whatever, and to become if it be necessary to that 
end, very different from a long suffering and ever enduring 
non-resistant in carrying his purposes into effect. No indeed, 
this is neither the most ready or safe way of restoring the bal- 
ance, or calculated to produce that happy condition of things 
preluded in Miss Martineau's beautiful lines, " the fraternity 
of man " when man with man shall — 

" Live as they worship, side by side, 
Their common claims revere." 

We trust that these suggestions will not be received as the 
portentous and vain croakings of staid and timid " conserva- 
tism," which like senile childhood, lives only in the past, sees 
in the present little but declension and rash innovation, and 
descries in the future nothing but ruinous destruction of the 
venerated and consecrated temples before whose sacred fanes 
he has been accustomed to bow himself, and in whose doc- 
trines and dogmas he alone recognizes " the pure milk" of the 
political, the literary and the religious world. Doubtless in 
these views as in almost everything else, there is a middle, 
just and discreet pathway which, when taken usually conducts 
the wary and way-wise traveller to the most safe and certain 
results. In medias tutissimus ibis, is a maxim certainly not 
to be despised or disregarded, perverted though it may often 
be, and surely is, by the ultra conservative, the tide waiters 
and the " waiters upon providence," who are ever " sitting 
upon the fence," watching for some convenient place where 
they may jump oft", and from whence they may throw them- 
selves and their future fortunes, into the passing and swelling 



32 

current, which promises to bear its floating barques with their 
insured cargoes into a safe harbor, and to a profitable mar- 
ket, for their advertised wares. 

But in the much better, eloquent, and well chosen language 
of Mr. Justice Story, " Considerations not less discouraging 
must arise, if either of the other two extremes of opinion 
are to possess an enduring influence. The truth is, that the 
past is not everything, nor the future everything, nor the 
present everything. The intellect of man is now neither in 
its infancy, nor in its decrepitude. Human Knowledge, 
whether it be for ornament or use, for pleasure or instruction, 
is the accumulation of the wisdom and genius of all ages, and 
is, like the occean, composed of contributions from infinitely 
various sources, whose currents have mingled together from 
the beginning, and must continue so to do, to the end of time. 
Sound the depths as you may, they will be found not entirely 
the same, nor entirely different. The shoals and the quick- 
sands may be removed from one side ; but they have often 
only shifted to the other. The waters may have become 
more clear and transparent in some parts ; but at the same 
time, more turbid and shallow in others. The general level 
has not materially changed in height, or the current in its 
breadth, although occasional tides may have ebbed and flowed 
with irregular and sometimes desolating power. In some 
places the alluvial deposits have buried the ancient landmarks; 
while in others they have been torn away, or submerged. So 
in some measure has it been with the history of the human 
mind. What has been gained in one direction has been al- 
most simultaneously lost in another. The known of one age 
has become the obscure of the next, and the lost of the sue- 
ceeding. The favorite pursuits and studies of one age, have 
sunk into insignificance or neglect into another. The value 
as well as the interest, of particular researches has fluctuated 
with the passions, and the theories, and the fashions of the 
day. And while each successive generation has imagined 
itself to stand upon the shoulders of all, that preceded them, 
and flattered itself with the belief that it surveyed all things 
with a more comprehensive power, and a less obstructed vis- 



33 

ion, it has forgotten, that on every side there is a natural 
boundary to the intellectual horizon, at which every object 
becomes obscure, or evanescent ; and that just in proportion 
as we advance in one direction, we may be receding from 
well defined and fixed lines of light in the other." 

For the particular consideration of the younger portion of 
our respected audience, through whose perhaps mistaken par- 
tiality we have been honored with this opportunity of standing 
in a position, and occupying a place reared by their enter- 
prise, and devoted principally to their intellectual and moral 
improvement, permit us to suggest a few brief hints of a 
somewhat personal nature ; intended under any aspects in 
which the present age may present itself, or the " signs of the 
times" may be thought in future to portend, to bear on their 
future well being, pursuits and destinies, in their progress 
through that perilous journey of life which is just opening 
upon their rising horizon, and which we entitle what they in 
fact were in their origin and conception : 

BROKEN AND BRIEF HINTS TO YOUNG MEN, 

FROM THE JOURNAL OF A SICK ROOM'S REFLECTIONS. 

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in tho 
Jays of thy youth, but remember, *** #***>> 

Although the speaker has prefixed a scriptural quotation 
to these few closing and desultory thoughts, he has not the 
ambition or the presumption to assume the office of a scrip- 
tural preacher, or to affect the port and bearing of a religious 
sermonizer. Such an assumption would neither befit his own 
position, nor be appropriate to the occasion which has called 
them forth. He has but adopted part of a broken text, in cor- 
respondence with, and conformity to the few broken hints and 
suggestions which he may throw out, flowing fitfully and irre- 
gularly, as they have, from a broken and frail cistern of nearly 
exhausted and troubled waters. 

Public duties, and objects of personal, ambition and 
tursuit. — Every man, young or old, has, of course} an opin- 



34 

ion to mako up and a duty to perform, touching the public 
concerns and interests of his country, which he is not at liberty 
to omit or to disregard ; and when called upon by its condition 
or the dangers which may threaten it, he is bound to examine 
from his best lights the questions presented to him, form his 
deliberate judgment thereon, and act according to its results, 
and as guided by the dictates of a well informed conscience 
in the premises. 

But there is always much false show of mock patriotism. 
put forth by the zealous and interested partisans of the 
day to cover their sinister designs and self-seeking, and 
which is but too often successful with their unsuspecting 
and uninitiated followers and supporters. Let all young 
men, however, who hope to establish for themselves in future 
life permanent and safe reliances of fortune, of character, and 
of tranquility, be cautioned against setting their hearts, or 
making their main dependencies upon political pursuits, objects 
and promotions, or the supposed benefits and emoluments ex- 
pected to flow to them from those unreliable and generally 
utterly delusive sources. 

Political ambition, and the promotion calculated upon from 
its pursuit, is a chase which when closely pursued, more often 
than otherwise perverts the high and honorable principles of 
the engrossed, impatient, and aspiring mind, which engages 
in it, and unfits it for the cool, patient and successful pursuit 
of better, more reliable, but less exciting objects. In our 
country, no man can travel all lengths with any party, without 
sometimes crossing the tracks of the straight path of duty and 
of conscience. And yet such are too often and too much its 
requirements as a condition on which to entitle its anxious 
and sedulous followers to their due share of the honors and 
emoluments which it may have to bestow upon its favorite 
votaries. " The madness of many for the gain of a few," is 
but too just an epitome of party ethics. Very few indeed, 
compared with the whole, are they of those who crowd its 
bustling and jostling ranks, who draw any of its beneficial 
and permanent prizes ; and those few, often through the leger- 
demain of some sly trick, dishonorable compromise of princi- 



35 

pie, or by the unfair turning and twisting of the great political 
wheel. This, every observing and disinterested spectator 
cannot fail to see, who looks but slightly at tho game which 
is going on and the shifting political phantasmagoria which 
are constantly and yearly passing before him. 

How ill-advised and short-sighted must it then be for a 
young man of correct sentiments, elevated views and high 
aims, to sacrifice better and more enduring objects, that he 
may fit himself to become one of the dancing, wire-moved 
puppets in such an inglorious exhibition ? Let him rather 
wait patiently and firmly in his own fast and well-anchored 
boat of principle and of honor, for the favoring tide to ap- 
proach and buoy him upward and onward, if it will, without 
striving to accommodate his course to its shifting and muddy 
surges, (and if it so happen that it never does reach him, it 
will be of little matter to him in the end ;) rather submit to 
this result, than to be forever following its various ebbs and 
flows, to the evident danger of his shipwreck at last, the loss 
of his « household gods," and his more valuable and honestly 
gained possessions and enjoyments. This is one of the allur- 
ing but dangerous rocks, which all young aspiring naviga- 
tors will do well to avoid. There are a thousand others of 
a more private and personal nature some of which may here 
be briefly hinted at. 

Personal habits aivd indulgencies. — It is probable that 
young men pretty universally esteem it a fortunate circum- 
stance, and a desirable object, that they now are, or soon may 
be enabled to command and enjoy the many personal gratifi- 
cations, indulgencies, and allurements of life, which fortune 
may have placed within their reach, or the means of which 
they fondly hope at no distant day to acquire and possess. 
This is a sadly false and delusive use and estimation of the 
true sources and means of the long continued and highest en- 
joyment of the good things of this life ; even of those which 
are too often esteemed as its summum bonum, the gratifica- 
tions of sense. 

With his plain and wholesome fare and health giving 
habits, the active and temperate farmer or mechanic en- 



36 

joys more in the long run, even of the pleasures of sensual 
appetite, than does the fastidious and feasting epicure and 
gormand, with his complicated and surfeiting viands. Besides 
this, that a continued course of selfish sensual gratification is 
inevitably followed up and confirmed into a fixed habit, utterly 
fatal to those higher, safer, and ever increasing enjoyments 
which grow out of the exercise of the intellectual, moral, and 
imaginative powers of the mind, its benevolent affections, and 
its lively interest in the beauties and harmonies of nature and 
of art, in all their admirable and inspiring works. 

Man was not created to yield everything to the suggestions 
of his present ease, or to the growing calls of his sensual 
cravings ; much less to be ever engaged in pampering and 
inflating them by gratuitous and needless provocatives. — 
From the time when our first parents were placed in the 
garden, his duty and his permanent well being has required 
of him, that he should resist manfully the proffered tempta- 
tion of the fair but treacherous fruit which is plucked and 
presented to him by the insidious hands of a thousand de- 
lusive charmers, "charming ever so wisely;" that he should 
maintain a constant and vigorous struggle, with the secretly 
armed adversaries " whose name is legion," and who in 
many cheating forms are ever watching for his annoyance 
and destruction. 

" Of comely form she was, and fair of face, 
And underneath her eyelids sat a kind 
Of witching sorcery, that nearer drew 
Whoever with unguarded looks beheld." 

To these he must ever be ready to give battle with all his 
forces, and not flatter himself that he can safely repose upon 
his downy couch in a state of easy quietude, or pampered 
and enervating indulgence. And woe be to him, as it cer- 
tainly will be, who mistakes this his irreversible and unwel- 
come destiny, and suffers himself to fall into the alluring lap 
of the Circean tempter who will soon bind him with her Phi- 
listine cords, when no Sampson's arm wherewith to burst them 
shall be left to him. Even the healthful fruits of the delight- 



37 

ful gardens of the Hesperides may be over used to the loath- 
ing and disgust of their imprudent partakers ; let them beware 
then of indulging themselves too largely or too frequently in 
their refreshing bowers, and of lingering too long in their 
seductive retreats. 

There are few more effective preachers than an academical 
or college catalogue, when its silent, but effective moral and 
practical teachings are seriously listened to by a contempla- 
tive observer, as he looks upon their thick starred columns after 
a few years' absence from his youthful classic retreats. How 
much the after usefulness, enjoyment, and respectability of 
future life, and even the long continuance of life itself in the 
ordinary course of providential dealings, depends upon the 
manner in which its early forming years may have been 
passed, will be made evident from the fact which such obser- 
vation will indicate, that but a very few, comparatively, of 
those young men who, when pursuing their collegiate or aca- 
demical course were distinguished for their idle, self-indulgent, 
and dissipated habits, will be found to have arrived in after 
life to a state of enviable reputation, or high distinction in 
any department of worldly honor or fame ; and a very large 
share of such will be found to have been quite short-lived, 
and to have passed early "ad astra" to a premature and inglo- 
rious grave. And any one who will make such examination 
of the fate of his classmates and cotemporaries in his acade- 
mical life, will find, perhaps to his surprise, that such is the 
almost invariable result. So true is it in the proverbial lan- 
guage of the wise man of old, that, " Happy is the man that 
findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding." 
" Length of days is in her right hand ; and in her left hand 
riches and honor." While of the froward and perverse it is 
at the same time and with equal truth, affirmed, " The man 
that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain 
in the congregation of the dead ;" and "Shame shall be the 
promotion of fools." 

It was amidst the musing contemplations suggested by lis- 
tening to such a silent preacher, that the following reflections 
were a short time since elicited. 



38 

LINES 

On $eeing a Catalogue of the Graduates of Yale College, after forty- 
eight years graduation there. Those deceased marked by stars. 
" Sic itur ad astra." 

As on my dim and fading sight, 
These thick starr'd columns rise, 
Sad thoughts my troubled heart o'erflow, 
And tears my weeping eyes. 

Fond memory now with vision strong, 
Surveys those ancient walls, 
Beneath whose calm and friendly shado, 
We trod Yale's classic halls. 

It tells, alas ! of other years, 
Of friends and follies past ; 
And ah! it tells of summer skies, 
By wintry clouds o'ercast. 

And still those ancient walls remain, 
Those pleasant halls are there ; 
But oh ! ye friends of other days, 
Where have ye vanished — where 1 

This star marked chronicle, it speaks 
How frail is life's fond dream ; 
How many gay and joyous hearts 
Have sunk beneath its stream. 

As ships upon the stormy main, 
By wasting tempests driven, 
Or by the winged lightning's shock, 
The verdant oak is riven. 

So launching on life's boisterous sea, 
Youth leaves his peaceful shore, 
Spreads all his canvass to the gale, 
And parts to meet no more. 

One sinks beneath the whelming wave, 
In manhood's ardent prime; 
Another floats through care-worn years, 
Down the dark tide of time. 

Oh ! is there not some tranquil port, 
Where storm-tossed barques shall ride, 
Beyond the swelling of life's sea, 
Above time's wasting tide ? 

Some calm retreat, some classic ground, 
In heavenly verdure drest, 
Where long lost friends shall meet again, 
And weary wanderers rest ? 



39 

It is impossible for the young, aspiring and glowing mind, 
with its bursting storehouse of full health, animal spirits, and 
fond anticipations, to realize the possibility of those changes 
of health, fortune, or condition, some of which inevitably 
await all whom " flesh is heir to ;" at some period of their 
mortal existence, although indeed in quite unequal degrees. 
And yet an occasional contemplation of this aspect of human 
life may not be useless in checking those undue expectations, 
and chastening those riotous exultations of the inexperienced 
heart, to which all such are prone : — it may furnish too, an 
additional inducement to inquire for, and to avoid some of 
the shoals of life by which many of those changes may have 
been prematurely brought about, or greatly aggravated in their 
degree and intensity. 

Now in life's bright and rising morning, and to the young, 
healthful, and unchastened heart, all is joy, serenity and peace 
in the present moment, and confident hope and expectation 
for the future one. But in its appointed season — 

" A change comes o'er the spirit of its dream ;" 

a sad and sorrowing change ! — the rough hand of time, age, 
disease or adversity, or all combined, perhaps is laid upon its 
confident and self satisfied possessor ; he is driven, like the 
pampered monarch of old, from the busy scenes which once 
occupied him, and from the many enjoyments in which he 
once delighted to participate, to linger out a cheerless and 
unblesssed existence, and to " eat grass like oxen." In this 
condition, no untried subject can at all realize, delineate or 
conceive the vivid and absorbing sensations, under the force 
of which the otherwise listless and unemployed mind falls 
hack as it were upon itself, and forever calls up the shadows 
(now dark and sombre ones) of departed days, scenes and 
associations, which although once deeply interesting and de- 
lightful, had nearly vanished from the reccollection, or lain 
dormant, amidst the active and absorbing scenes of life's va- 
ried occupations, recreations, or amusements. Now in his 
secluded retreats, how brightly and intensely, and yet how 
sadly, hover over and around him — 



40 

" Those rainbow dreams, 
So Innocent and fair, that withered age, 
Ev'n at the grave cheer'd up his dusty eye ; 
And passing all between, look'd fondly baek 
To see them once again ere he departed." 

And yet how little were those days, scenes, associations 
and opportunities realized, and their intrinsic charms and 
value estimated, as they were in possession or passing, com- 
pared with those new estimates of them, which are elicited 
when viewed through the magnifying, retrospective telescope 
of their passed and vanished shadows ; and for the lamented 
loss of which the stagnated and exhausted fountains of life 
can afford no substitute or compensation ; for most certain it 
is, that — 

" We cannot from the dregs of life receive, 
That which its fresher runnings failed to give." 

Happy those who can fill this fearful vacuum by drawing 
refreshing waters from a deeper and more exhaustless foun- 
tain elsewhere ! The best partial preventative or palliative 
for most of these destined and some of them unavoidable af- 
flictions of humanity, whether constitutional or acquired, will 
be found in self denying temperate habits of life, an active 
and engaged scene of employment of all the bodily and men- 
tal powers ; and an habitual interest, association and sympa- 
thy in the well being, the wants and enjoyments of our fellow 
men ; and never forgetting amongst all the appointed means 
and requisites for assured happiness here below, that 

" From purity of heart all pleasure springs, 
And from a quiet conscience all our peace." 

But after all is done or attempted, we may adjust the parts, 
regulate the movements and oil the springs of this mysteri- 
ously complicated physical and spiritual machine as we may, 
the saddening view of its disjointed and decayed ruins, is a 
spectacle sure, near and fast approaching to all of them. And 
what a spectacle, indeed is that ! Look upon its earthly re- 
mains whilst yet left lingering here in its frail and perishing 



41 

tenement, upon its low and last couch, not much more uncon- 
scious perhaps of the joys and the beauties of the existence 
in and around it, than is the weary and worn burden, which 
it a little longer sustains. The once active, bounding, and 
elastic limbs, now torpid, stiff, and paralysed ; the intelligent, 
brilliant, and darting eye, sunk, glazed, and wandering ; the 
perception, once quick and penetrating, slow and obtuse ; the 
affections once ardent and glowing, cold and indifferent ; the 
imagination once revelling in a world redolent of life and 
beauty, plunging through a struggling morass of death, defor- 
mity and decay ; the aspirations once lofty and ennobling, 
crushed, degraded, and self abasing ; the senile tear and the 
deep-drawn groan fill up and finish the gasping and vanishing 
portrait ; and there, even there, upon that lorn and restless 
couch lies mayhap all that remains here of the hero, the 
statesman, the sage, the orator, or the minstrel. What a self 
humbling and abasing spectacle is that ! and how does its 
near contemplation sink into almost utter worthlesness, the 
most lofty capacities, the proudest attainments, and the widest 
domains of the most envied possessor of them all ? 

And yet in the humble semblance of this dark and forlorn 
portrait must all fie sh, with some slight variation of its distin- 
guishing "lights and shades," be at last sketched and presen- 
ted to our averted and unwilling gaze ; and in this struggling 
and " parting strife" must each and every one, with somewhat 
greater or less degrees of prominence, act or bear his final 
part and character. Why or wherefore thus constituted and 
thus destined by a benevolent and all-wise architect, 

" We know not ; but we soon shall know 
" When life's sore conflicts cease." 

And happy and fortunate, is he whom " wisdom's great 
teacher" has not only instructed how to live usefully to his 
fellow beings, and happily to himself here in this transient 
vale of disappointment and of trouble, — 

" * * # * * * But ah ! too high 
For human knowledge, taught him how to die !" 



42 



POSTSCRIPT. 



We omitted to notice in its proper place with the distinct, 
ness and prominence which it is entitled to, as evidence of 
the highly advancing and progressive state of our country for 
the last fifty years in the great cause of humanity and of so- 
cial improvement, the contrasted state of the charitable and 
benevolent institutions and associations existing within it at 
these different periods. At the former one, no associations 
for the promotion of Temperance, or for moral improvement 
as such, existed, it is believed, through the whole extent of 
the land ; no Asylums for the insane, no retreats for the mute 
and the blind, no general hospitals for the infirm, reared by 
the hands of benevolence and charity, opened their hospita- 
ble doors for the relief and consolation of suffering humanity ; 
if we except perhaps the one at an early day erected by the 
hand, and dictated by the enlarged spirit of William Penn, 
and sustained by the active piety of his admirable and phi. 
lanthropic Christian sect, the society of Friends. What these 
institutions and associations are now, and how diffusive in 
their effects upon human improvement, comfort and happiness 
it were superfluous to recount. The story is more emphati- 
cally told in the words of an intelligent and observing foreign, 
er who has lately visited our country, and whose national 
feelings would certainly not prompt him in this or any other 
respect to do it more than justice at any rate. Says Mr. 
Dickens in his « Notes on America." 

« Above all I sincerely believe that the public institutions 
and charities of this capital of Massachusetts, are as nearly 
perfect as the most considerate wisdom, benevolence and hu- 
manity can make them." The same credit, though in a less 



43 

perfect and lower degree may justly be awarded to most of 
the other states and portions of our country, whose territories 
are dotted over with these noble trophies of humanity and 
practical piety. We have no space or time to do more than 
to allude merely to the great advances we have made in the 
same time in ameliorating the sanguinary penal code of for. 
mer times ; the almost entire abrogation of capital punish- 
ment, soon it is hoped to be sought for only amongst the M lost 
things of the earth ;" and the admirable systems of state pri- 
son discipline and employment which have taken the abhorred 
places of the " gallows and the whipping post," those nearly 
discarded relics of a barbarous and bloody age. 



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